


Hold

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-09
Updated: 2011-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:23:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cordelia, Aral and Simon Illyan: working out the steps of the dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold

He's leaning against the wall, arms folded, eyes half-closed. Cordelia knows it's neither genuine ease nor an act, but just a mode of being; any sudden noise, any change in the currents of the air and the threads of tension will reappear in that indolent frame, eyes open bright. She sits beside him and says, "Repeat it, Simon. Again, please."

He glances down at her in the chair beside him. "Milady, please." When she doesn't yield, he breathes out and says it. "I am not on duty. This is a private party, to which I am invited as a guest. Other people are doing my job. I can relax."

"Was it that hard?" She reaches up and touches his arm, absently. He flinches and she sighs. "All right, all right, I'll stop."

"Thank you, milady." There's an edge of humour in his voice. Straightening up, he scans the room quickly, eyes flickering over everything. Cordelia follows his gaze, not taking in security risks and threats, but just the scene of a party entering the mellow stage. Alys Vorpatril and Aral are talking quietly on the other side of the glass; Drou is fetching Kou a drink; the few, select guests are milling around inside and through the open doors to the terrace, where there are braziers of coals radiating into the cold night. On Beta Colony, it's called a getting-to-know-you party. Cordelia isn't sure if it refers to the guests, meeting a newborn – a person, she thinks, with sudden starry wonderment, a new human being – or if it refers to the infant, looking through new eyes at a new world. She suspects the latter. _You and me both, baby_ , she thinks fondly in Miles's direction. He's doing well, flat in his little bassinet with no bones broken. Bothari stands on guard, motionless.

"It's a nice idea," Simon says, reading her mind. "Among my parents' people, there were similar customs."

She nods. Something, not a security risk, has caught her attention. Gregor has been very good tonight, dancing around the room with Droushnakovi, and being allowed to hold Ivan, and to delicately touch Miles on the forehead, frowning with concentration. He's fallen asleep on the arm of a couch, a piece of cake held squashed in one outstretched hand. She gets up and takes it from him, finds a cloth on the table to wipe off the worst of the stickiness, and with a huffed sigh, picks him up so his head rests on her shoulder. He doesn't wake up. "Past your bedtime, sweetheart," she says, laughing a little to herself. "You're getting heavier."

She returns to her chair by the wall. Simon hasn't moved, and she feels the tensing in his body at the sight of Gregor. " _Relax_ , Simon," she says, sharply. "We ran over the security arrangements for this party endlessly, if you recall?"

He merely looks at her. "Yes, milady."

She laughs. "Sorry. That was a stupid question. Oh" – she pauses, remembering something – "I almost forgot. Happy birthday, Simon."

He raises an eyebrow. "Thank you. Er, how did you know?"

Cordelia smiles, stroking Gregor's hair. "Aral was going through personnel records and I just happened to notice. Last week, wasn't it? How old?"

Simon looks a little unsure of himself for a moment, reserve quickly closing over his puppy-dog features. "Thirty."

"Thirty," Cordelia says, nodding at Gregor. "A similar age, you know."

"I'm sorry, milady?" Simon looks confusedly at her, and then at Gregor, all of five, sleeping, thumb in mouth.

"The fierce growth is over," Cordelia says reflectively. "Now the pause to regroup, now the long haul."

"I can take him for a while," Simon says suddenly. "If he's getting heavy for you."

"Thank you," Cordelia says, and she stands up. There's a moment of awkwardness resolving into surety as she leans into him, his body heat apparent, and then she's sitting down again, feeling a little bereft. Gregor wakes up for a moment, murmuring something.

"Hush," Simon says softly, and shifts the weight. With Gregor in his arms, he looks younger, Cordelia thinks, softer than when she first met him in a war. "Hush," he whispers, "I'm not your ma, I'm your Chief of Imperial Security, it's almost as good" – and again, there's that edge of humour in his voice.

Cordelia smiles. "You're good with him," she says, a little surprised.

"I have a younger sister." It's at once answer, explanation, and more information than she had.

"And how's it going?" she asks, lightly.

"What's that?" he murmurs, his attention on Gregor.

"The long haul," she says, remembering suddenly that she had a couple of glasses of wine after dinner, and it's beginning to show. "Life. Its projects."

"I do well enough, milady," he says, again with that closed-off expression – and then Aral enters the room, quietly at the far side, saying nothing, and Simon's grip on Gregor tightens, tension builds beneath his skin like a flame.

*

"Aral," Cordelia says quietly. He moves to make room for her, beside the brazier. She holds out her hands to it, still so unused to the outside air, to the cold.

"Dear Captain," he says, fondly, and puts an arm around her. "This was a marvellous idea. I admit to having had my doubts."

"On Beta Colony it would have been straight after the birth, but I don't think the delay hurt anyone." Least of all Miles, she thinks, who needed the time to heal from the breaks. "And you didn't have doubts," she adds. "You had a tantrum."

"A detail." He quirks an eyebrow at her, and Cordelia smiles, leaning against him. It's a moment of quiet, and she uses it to draw in on herself, taking time for self-examination. The Betan-style gathering has done much for her inner reserves: allowed her to draw strength together for her little family. And she'd wanted to show something to the old Vor: Miles, Gregor and Ivan, with their sticky fingers and large wondering eyes, children before they're everything else.

She's beginning to think in terms of political agenda. Like a Barrayaran, she thinks, and smiles to herself. Aral notices and doesn't ask, but holds her closer. "Where's the Emperor?" he asks, presently.

"Gregor," Cordelia says, with the slightest emphasis, "is with Simon." She points through the open door at Simon with Gregor's arms wrapped around his neck.

Aral chuckles. "I suppose there's no safer place for him in the empire." A pause. "He's a good man, Simon. Well, he must be," he adds with a wry smile, and a small look of surprise, "as I place my life in his hands every day."

Cordelia nods, thinking, watching Simon through the door, watching Aral. "We had a conversation once," she says after a moment. The brazier's heat against the cold is a dizzying contrast, the bubbling coals an irresistible fascination.

He looks at her and says nothing.

"About," she pauses, "love. And fidelity. And honour. And about how... perhaps I understand them differently from you."

"That I know to be true," Aral says, quietly, without any hint of dismissal. "I love you for it."

"Right." She smiles. "I'm just reminding you of it."

He nods and takes her hand, and she, impulsively, reaches in and kisses him. Her arms go around his neck, and there's something of a stolen quality to this evening, something of a reprieve. On the other side of the terrace Alys stands up and moves inside, and there's only a softness, only a wistfulness in her face in the firelight.

They draw apart. The coals spit and fizz, a bird calls from the garden below.

"You have something on your mind," Aral says.

"Yes," Cordelia says, a little breathlessly, aware of the sound of their heightened breathing in the quiet. "Simon Illyan, the man standing in the doorway looking at you as though you were..."

Aral pulls back. "What?"

"Water," Cordelia says, honesty drawn out of her like a thread, "water" – and she's from Beta Colony and she doesn't have to finish the metaphor, and from the look in his eyes Aral understands it. Cordelia kisses him again, running fingers through his hair, and murmurs, "You trust him with your life."

"Cordelia," Aral says, helplessly, "Cordelia, I..."

"I'm going to see to the children," she says, and stands up.

*

A party for children can break up with no vomiting in the bushes. Cordelia says goodbye to Kou, to Alys – who smiles, picks up Ivan, thanks Cordelia for a lovely evening with a knowing look in her eyes – and then hands Gregor to Drou, picking up Miles's basket herself. Bothari trails behind as they climb the stairs. The exhaustion in Gregor's face is so apparent that Cordelia makes a quick decision, pulls off his little cavalry boots and lets him sleep in his clothes for once. The night nurse in the next room is just coming on duty, so she goes in for a quick word, returns, kisses Miles's forehead and Gregor's cheek, and turns out the lights.

She pauses at the top of the stairs. Drou heads off after Kou, calling thanks behind her, and Bothari nods solemnly and takes up his post outside the nursery door.

Cordelia makes her way down, listening to the two voices from below, too muffled for her to make out the words, but she understands enough from the rhythm of them: one cuts over the other, which picks up where the first left off, and then there's a smooth reply and quicker rejoinder, each set of phrases getting shorter and shorter, like two sailboats, tacking, converging on a point.

She stops in the doorway, half-hidden by the door. She's aware of her own breathing, again, and her heartbeat, pounding in the silence of this space.

"Simon," Aral says, softly.

Aral and Simon are standing five paces apart, looking at each other. There is no one else in the room. Aral's right hand is outstretched; Simon's left hand held up, held back. They move in formation, battle-choreographed, attacking and retreating and surrendering space. They're close enough to hear each other whisper. Cordelia's standing still. Instinctively, her own hand goes to her ear, touching a marker that's no longer there.

"Do you remember," Aral says, quietly, voice rising, and then smiles. "I know you do."

Cordelia sees the movement because she's looking for it. In slow motion she watches Simon step forwards, out of the rhythm. Aral responds: moves towards him, all strength and coiled power in his muscles, places a confident determined hand on the back of Simon's neck, draws him forwards and kisses him, hard, on the mouth.

Simon steps back and steps forward, with tension rocking him back and forth, and then Cordelia sees him melt into it, give in to it, offer himself up to it. The tension in his body becomes fluidity, becomes grace.

Aral takes him as a gift, holding him at arm's length to look at him, pulling him back in. "You're still... you're mine."

"Yes." It's one word like a gavel falling. The quiet and the low light in the room, Cordelia thinks, dizzily, is why she can see the shape of something that was always there. Simon's feet aren't quite touching the ground, a rag-doll slackness in his lifted heels.

When Aral draws back it's with a dazed open-eyed look, a sense of wonder. "You will remember this... until the end of days."

"Yes." Simon lands on his feet and looks straight up at him.

"Cordelia-" Aral says, cut-off, and they both turn to her with mirrored movements.

She opens her mouth, then pauses. She smiles, hands open. "Yes," she says.

In the grand old mirror on the opposite wall she sees them come together again, watches for a moment the way one of Aral's hands pushes back Simon's hair, pausing infinitesimally on the surgical scar below it, with the other hand finding its way to skin beneath the service green, under his collar on the back of Simon's neck. She breathes in, breathes out, goes on moving, listening to the thud of her heart and the thud of bodies against a table, against a wall.

She's sitting on the edge of the bed when Aral comes in, later, smelling cleanly of sweat, citrus and sex, with a sated heaviness to his limbs as he throws himself down. There are finger-marks on his arms, curved half-moons where nails dug in. Cordelia smiles to herself where he can't see.

*

Just after dawn, Gregor wakes up, muttering for his mother. Cordelia scoops him up and hugs him fiercely, whispering to him as he lays his head on her shoulder. She holds him until he seems to be dozing, and then finds him some pyjamas and tucks him in. She stands by the window for a while, watching the slow lightening of the sky, moving shades of purple and grey across the black, and catches a movement from the corner of her eye, a shifting, tiny light.

Gregor is sleeping. Cordelia gives him a quick glance, nods at Bothari and walks deliberately down the stairs, out into the garden. The grass is heavy with dew, the air thick with vapour. Cordelia picks her way carefully across, holding up her skirts, wishing for her Survey fatigues, and finds Simon Illyan leaning against the side of the building, head down, arms folded.

Sighing a little, she moves to stand beside him, echoing the pose and letting the wall take some of her weight. He looks across at her, his expression unreadable. There's a softness to his stance, a comfortable languor unfit for the freezing air.

"Simon," she says, with more forthrightness than she actually feels at this time of the morning. "What are you doing out here?"

"I'm on..."

"And don't tell me you're on duty," she steamrollers on. "I may not have an eidetic memory implant, but we _did_ go over those security arrangements endlessly and I know for a fact you're not on duty until nine o'clock this morning. And as you _are_ on duty at nine o'clock this morning" – she waves a hand to forestall the reply he's trying to make – "why the hell aren't you in bed?"

He pauses, still with that unreadable look. "This week I was on night duty," he says, slowly. "I was sleeping during the days."

She stares back. "The Chief of ImpSec has night duty?"

"When he chooses."

She nods. "All right. And why are you out here in the cold?"

He says nothing, but his head tips unconsciously back. Cordelia glances upwards and realises that two stories above is the nursery window. She remembers the fights they'd had about it: ImpSec adamant that it was an unacceptable risk for Gregor and Miles to be sleeping in the same room, and her own retort that they'd share like children everywhere, that Gregor would never wake up to an empty room. Simon looks back down at his boots, and Cordelia shivers involuntarily. Her hands and feet are icy, the cold creeping into her like an insidious tide.

"Were you going to tell me?" she says, after a while.

"About what, milady?"

She raises her eyebrows at him. "Simon, don't play dumb with me. It doesn’t work."

He inclines his head. "It was a long time ago."

Cordelia doesn't bother to point out that that's not an answer. She's thinking about the heat in the room, the marks on Aral's arms, about Simon being held up like a doll. "I know the difference between what's past and what's forgotten."

"It's not forgotten." He gives her a wry smile. "How could I forget?"

"But," Cordelia persists.

"But?"

And she's struggling now, a chasm opening that she cross with words. "Simon, are you..." she begins, and stops, breathes, starts again, fails again, reaches out to him, one outstretched hand with fingers curling against the cold.

He takes it, his grip warming. They stand there for a moment, strange kin, Cordelia thinks a little feverishly, strange in all the ways love is strange.

"I know you haven't forgotten," she says, fumbling for words again, "but is this something that you... something you're sure..."

"Yes," he says, and in an instinctive gesture, his hand comes up to his collar, touching his silver Horus eyes.

"Why are you out here, really?" Cordelia asks, gently.

He looks up at the children's window and says, "Duty."

Cordelia breathes out, slowly. Somewhere towards the east the first sliver of orange is emerging over the horizon; the light that's coming up is playing strange tricks, taking the softness out of Simon's face, bringing harsh lines to the silhouettes in the garden.

"Goodnight, Simon," she says, softly, and touches him, briefly. He doesn't flinch, watching her go with steady eyes lit by the rising sun.

*

The Residence is less quiet now, the sounds of people beginning to wake up starting all over the building. But Gregor and Miles are peaceful in the morning light, and there's an hour to go before it's really time to rise. She leaves them under Bothari's watchful eye and hurries up to bed, the cold suddenly breaking and unbearable inside her bones.

"Cordelia," Aral murmurs, not quite awake – and it's a joy to her, that the slight disturbance hasn't launched him into battle-readiness. She sits there, drying the dew from her feet, thinking, suddenly and rapidly, about Beta Colony. About the constitutional rights that vested in her at birth: her rights to life, to communication, to sustenance, to sexual pleasure, to freedom from restraint and constraint; about Miles's getting-to-know-you party, about she wants to give him, what she's brought with her that she wants him to have, even here. Here, where she's seen death, and poverty, and ignorance; where she's seen, standing in that room, one man's quiet hold of another.

She's changing. "Aral," she says, softly, getting into bed. "Go back to sleep."

"Dear Captain," he says, and in the light from the window he looks washed-out, happy, and she's not the only one who is.


End file.
